The research focuses upon outcome of short-term psychiatric situational crisis intervention with a high risk group of children entering first foster home placement. The Department of Social Services, County of Westchester, White Plains, New York, will refer such children who are under 13 years old, and their siblings entering placement. Early decisions are sought collaboratively by caseworkers and clinicians as to whether least detrimental outcome will be return to biological parents, permanent foster placement, or adoption. Results of short-term clinical interventions will be assessed in correlation with achievement of these goals. Families are being randomly assigned to two types of short-term situational crisis preventive therapies, or an additional group which does not receive further treatment following evaluation. A prospective experimental study is underway with pre- and post-treatment measures providing intergroup and intra-individual comparisons with a prediction of the direction of differences. Baseline social, psychological, cognitive and behavioral measurements will be compared with measurements six and twelve months later. Outcome measures, to be compared across treatment groups, include amount of time spent in first foster placements, number of placements per child, promptness of return and duration of stay when returned to biological parent(s) or adopted.